Noah Baumbach on “Jay Kelly,” His New Movie with George Clooney

Summary

Podcast Summary: The New Yorker Radio Hour

Episode: Noah Baumbach on “Jay Kelly,” His New Movie with George Clooney

Date: December 2, 2025
Host: David Remnick
Guest: Noah Baumbach (Filmmaker)
Interviewer: Susan Morrison (New Yorker staff)

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Overview

This episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour features filmmaker Noah Baumbach in conversation with Susan Morrison at the New Yorker Festival, focusing on his new film "Jay Kelly," starring George Clooney and Adam Sandler. The dialogue traces Baumbach’s creative journey, his shifting relationship to cinema, and the existential threads running through his work. They discuss returning to personal themes, the challenge of making movies after success, and the playful as well as profound ways in which identity is explored on and off-screen.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Rediscovering a Love for Filmmaking

• Baumbach’s Disenchantment and Renewal
  • Baumbach explains he fell out of love with filmmaking during the grueling shoot for "White Noise" (00:56), particularly amid the difficulties of filming during COVID.
  • Writing "Jay Kelly" coincided with co-writing "Barbie," where witnessing Greta Gerwig's directorial energy reignited his own passion for movies.
  • Quote:
    • “It was somewhere on a sort of deserted highway in Ohio at about 4am with a rain machine shooting white noise that I think I felt like, oh, God, I don't know that I like doing this.” – Noah Baumbach (02:56)
  • He reflects on the need to periodically check in with oneself and one’s motivations—"am I doing this only because I do it?"

2. Artistic Maturity and Meta-Reflection

• Themes of Endings and Mortality

  • The film opens with the line "We're coming to the end," reflecting both the protagonist’s and Baumbach’s own contemplation of endings, maturity, and mortality (05:28).
  • The narrative explores whether continued creation is informed by love or habit as Baumbach reconciles creative fulfillment with personal life.

• Quote:

  • “It's good in a way too, to check back in with yourself, because I think it's something that I dreamt of doing. It's something I always wanted to do. And, you know, I've been doing it for a long time now.” – Noah Baumbach (03:54)

3. The Recurrence of “First Lines” as Thematic Signposts

• Setting the Movie’s Tone from the Opening
  • Morrison observes a pattern in Baumbach's films where the first line telegraphs the overall theme. Baumbach claims to be mostly unconscious of this, suggesting such metaphors arise instinctively. (06:42–08:38)
  • Quote:
    • “You always kind of want to tell the story of the movie in the beginning of a movie... a kind of representation of what the rest of the movie, Jay's journey, is going to be.” – Noah Baumbach (07:40)

4. Autobiography, Success, and Identity

• Projecting Personal Experiences onto Characters
  • Baumbach’s earlier characters are often defined by their failures or frustrations, while Jay Kelly is a wildly successful actor. Yet, regardless of success or failure, both are forms of not confronting one’s true self (09:40).
  • He notes the perils of defining oneself through external markers—success is just another mask, not a resolution.
  • Quote:
    • “Defining yourself by your own success is sort of the same challenge. Because it's just another way of not knowing who you are, not looking at where you really are and where you, you know.” – Noah Baumbach (10:27)

5. Success, Ambition, and the Universal “Gap”

• Is Contentment Possible?
  • Morrison asks if there's a "medium" level of success that allows for happiness. Baumbach believes the gap between who we are and who we want to be is unclosable—it’s a human constant (13:01).
  • Quote:
    • “No, because we probably just want more. I think no matter what, there's a gap, you know, no one's ever going to close that gap.” – Noah Baumbach (13:01)

6. Satire and Hollywood Comedy

• Insider Gags and the “Cheesecake” Rider
  • "Jay Kelly" blends sharp Hollywood satire with deeper themes. A recurring gag about a cheesecake always waiting for the protagonist (due to an outdated preference) morphs into a metaphor for stuck identities and the repetition of patterns (18:43–20:06).
  • Quote:
    • “Are we the person who said it then? Are we? You know, and these things, like this rider idea too, they get repeated. So it is sort of like, well, I wanted this one time years ago and I'm still getting it, you know, and it kind of can keep you from advancing or changing in your life...” – Noah Baumbach (18:27–20:06)

7. Self-Narration and Repetitive Stories

• How Dialogue and Self-Told Stories Shape Identity

  • Baumbach notes his affinity for repeating dialogue and family stories as a cinematic technique, mimicking how people reinforce or reassess their identities through shared narratives (21:12–22:14).

• Quote:

  • “How language, the way we talk or the way the characters talk, becomes self-defining too, and can they break those patterns?... how people's patterns can change over the course of a movie and how that is also a way of discovering character…” – Noah Baumbach (21:12–22:14)

8. Jay Kelly’s Core Realization

• Accepting One’s Only Life
  • The crux of "Jay Kelly": the character gradually recognizes that the story he tells himself—justifying compromise or ambition—is wearing thin. The central, even “shocking” realization is that this life is all there is, and every choice counts (22:23).
  • Quote:
    • “This is the only one he's gonna get. This is the only, this is the only version of his life. And these decisions are real decisions and they've had real consequences and they're real.” – Noah Baumbach (22:23)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• Disenchantment with Filmmaking:
  • “I felt like, oh, God, I don't know that I like doing this.” — Noah Baumbach (02:56)
• On Whether He Has a ‘Rider’:
  • “No, I don't have... For him, this sort of notion... there's a cheesecake as part of like the assortment of things... and he says, I don't like cheesecake. How. Why is this always here?” — Noah Baumbach (18:47)
• On Patterns in Dialogue:
  • “What people say is not what they're saying. And I often write a lot of extraneous stuff that isn't even really meant to be focused on. It's like musical, just sounds and things, but... how people's patterns can change over the course of a movie and how that is also a way of discovering character.” — Noah Baumbach (21:12–22:14)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 02:29 – Baumbach discusses falling out and back in love with filmmaking.
• 05:28 – The film’s opening line and themes of endings.
• 06:42 – The significance of opening lines in Baumbach’s films.
• 09:40 – Success, failure, and defining oneself.
• 13:01 – The unclosable gap between self-perception and reality.
• 18:27 – Hollywood details: the cheesecake gag and its metaphorical importance.
• 21:12 – Dialogue as a tool for characterization and the importance of repeated stories.
• 22:23 – Jay Kelly’s journey to understanding his one and only life.

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Closing

The conversation offers an insightful, self-reflective look at Noah Baumbach’s artistic evolution, using “Jay Kelly” as a case study in confronting identity, the creative process, and the perpetual gap between experience and self-conception. Baumbach’s candor, humor, and philosophical bent permeate the exchange, making it both an engaging listen for cinephiles and a thoughtful meditation on modern artistic life.

Transcript

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[New Yorker Radio Hour Announcer]

This is the new yorker radio hour, a co production of wnyc studios and the new yorker.

[David Remnick]

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. The filmmaker Noam Baubach was long known for comedies and dramas that drew on his own life. Films like the Squid and the Whale and Marriage Story. But things change, and so did Baumbach's source material. In 2022, he released White Noise, which is based on the novel by Don DeLillo. And then in 2023, he worked on a smash hit in Hollywood called Barbie. He co wrote the script with Greta Gerwig, who directed. Baumbach's latest film is something of a return to form. It's a sharp character study of of an extremely handsome, extremely famous movie star having an identity crisis. George Clooney, of course, plays the actor and Adam Sandler is his beleaguered manager.

[Noah Baumbach]

Suddenly remembering things I haven't thought about.

[Susan Morrison]

In a long time.

[Sponsor/Advertiser Voice]

Our family's losing it at home.

[Noah Baumbach]

It's like a movie where I'm playing myself, watching myself. I'm sorry, you gotta go again. I didn't hear a word you said. I said I'm suddenly remembering things. And what is that memory? Well, yes, maybe your memory's trying to tell you something about your present. My what? I don't know. I'm tired. Just had a fight.

[David Remnick]

J. Kelly opened in theaters and it will stream on Netflix starting this week. Now, we at the New Yorker take a familial pride in Noah Baumbach. He worked as a messenger in the office back when that was a thing. And he wrote his first humor piece for us in 1991, and he still contributes every so often. At this year's New Yorker Festival, our own Susan Morrison sat down with Noah Baumbach to talk about the new film.

[Susan Morrison]

Now, J. Kelly is a love letter to a certain classic kind of movie, and it has this lush Hollywood score by Nicholas Britell, a big movie star. These gorgeous locations. But I've read that you've said that working on this movie, it began as an exercise to. To help you try to prod you to fall in love with movies all over again. When did you fall out of love with them? Why did you have to do that?

[Noah Baumbach]

It was somewhere on a sort of deserted highway in Ohio at about 4am with a rain machine shooting white noise that I think I felt like, oh, God, I don't know that I like doing this. And that movie was just very difficult for me for several reasons. And, I mean, we shot during COVID which was a. A big part of it, just because it was so difficult and such a fraught time, but it was just really difficult. I'm proud of the movie, but the making of it was so hard. And I was just thinking. But then actually, when I was writing J. Kelly, I also. Then I went and worked on Barbie with Greta and the filming of it, and that was a really great shoot. And that sort of almost like watching her. And as she has many times for me, like, she sort of led by example, I guess. And I had a really good time on that. So I felt like, well, maybe I do still like it, but it's a thing, I guess you have to kind of. It's good in a way too, to check back in with yourself, because I think it's something that I dreamt of doing. It's something I always wanted to do. And, you know, I've been doing it for a long time now. And so I was sort of like, well, am I doing this only because I do it? Maybe I want to go restart. And so it is part of the energy of J. Kelly is my affection for the medium and both the movies themselves, but also the making of them.

[Susan Morrison]

Yeah. I remember now reading about pajama parties on the set of Barbie. I mean, it must have been a very different vibe than, you know, I.

[Noah Baumbach]

Didn'T say those, but the girls only, I guess. Yeah, yeah, there was the Barbie.

[Susan Morrison]

But it must have been a very different. I mean, I'm thinking filming that scene in the car and the river in white noise, I mean, that must have been very different.

[Noah Baumbach]

It was hard. Yeah, it was really difficult. And it's not like my favorite kind of things to be doing in movies.

[Susan Morrison]

It's almost an action movie, actually.

[Noah Baumbach]

And I kind of was doing it because it was what the material required. And sometimes I write something and then when I'm directing it, I kind of realize, oh, now I have to actually interpret what I wrote, you know. And with that one in particular, I think I realized sort of Too late. How ambitious it all was. Too late for my own pleasure. I mean, it's hard to actually write something and say, I'm gonna fall in love with movies again. I mean, it could have not paid off.

[Susan Morrison]

Well, the opening line of J. Kelly, which is the opening scene, is on a movie set as they're wrapping a film. The opening line is, we're coming to the end. And I kept thinking if I'd seen that in the script, it would just make me think it was a Beckett play. You know, there is. It does have a kind of a valedictory feel. And so even though the whole movie is a love letter to movies, there's also a sense of you as this kind of mature artist, you know, reckoning with your work in the same way that that's what J. Kelly is doing. So, I mean, for you, was that a little bit of a struggle or is that just the character that you're writing?

[Noah Baumbach]

Yeah, well, I'm sure. I'm sure it must be. And the endings is another sort of aspect of the movie, I think. And that was kind of implicit, I guess, in my. The feelings I was having about do I love this is also, I'm now I'm older, I have, you know, other things that I, you know, I have a family, I think, you know, things that I could be spending my time, you know, more time doing. And do I love this enough? So that feeling of coming toward facing the end and in life as well, I mean, they're facing the end in the movie, but they're also J. Kelly's facing his mortality.

[Susan Morrison]

I mentioned to you that last night I was talking to Ian Parker, one of our writers, who wrote a great profile about 12 years ago, and he reminded me of something that Greta had said to him when he was working on this piece, which is how very often the first lines of your movies kind of basically tell you everything that is about to happen. In Meyerowitz Stories, Adam Sandler is trying to park, parallel park.

[Noah Baumbach]

I didn't get my driving license til I was 40.

[Susan Morrison]

And Sandler says, am I fitting? You know, and in the beginning of Greenberg, Greta is trying to merge into traffic on the freeway. And she says, are you going to let me in? You know, So I mean. And then I also realized that Squid in the Whale opens with, you know, the son, one of the sons, saying on the tennis court, mom and me versus you and dad. So, I mean, it's almost like it's a conscious decision to kind of give the CliffsNotes to the movie before it.

[Noah Baumbach]

Even Putting it out there. Just so obvious. Yeah, I don't know. I'm not even that aware of that. I mean, it was brought up at a certain point, but I mean, I think it's really sort of like you always kind of want to tell the story of the movie in the beginning of a movie. I mean, the opening shot of J. Kelly is in a way a kind of representation of what the rest of the movie, Jay's journey, is going to be. And so whether it's the line or it's something else, but a lot of those ones just were. Just were the lines. I mean, when you were just now talking about Meyerowitz, I was sort of wondering what the first line was. And I guess that works.

[David Remnick]

It does.

[Noah Baumbach]

The Are youe Gonna Let Me In? One was, I was doing for Greenberg. I was doing an interview after the movie came out, and the interviewer pointed out that this was what the story of the movie was. It was sort of like, are you gonna let her to Greenberg? Are you gonna let me in? And I all of a sudden felt myself about to cry. Cause I didn't. I'd never thought of it or.

[Susan Morrison]

I think metaphors are unconscious. I just now remember that when we first talked about squid and the whale 20 years ago, I said, you know, there's a lot of ping pong and tennis in this movie. Is that because the movie's about these children going back and forth between their parents as a part of their custody arrangement? And you shocked me by saying that has never occurred to you?

[David Remnick]

No.

[Noah Baumbach]

Now again, I'm shocked again when you say that.

[Susan Morrison]

Well, you know, your movies often were talking about squid have a really strong autobiographical component. And this one is about a giant movie star. You're not a giant movie star, but you're a big deal Hollywood director. And it's tempting to kind of see J. Kelly in some ways as a stand in for you. Especially. It makes me wonder, after the giant success of Barbie, one of the highest grossing movies of all time, do you feel like, have you kind of vaulted into a slightly different relationship to Hollywood, or is it more just about age? As we were talking about, you know, looking back at your whole.

[Noah Baumbach]

And I also think the notion of an actor, you know, was something that was. It was a good metaphor for something, you know, about sort of playing yourself, which is something a lot of my movies are kind of about. I guess it's sort of how we play ourselves. I also, what I, you know, you think about these things in retrospect. I've written a lot of my characters in the past have been people who define themselves by a certain lack of success or a lack of the success they hoped for, the way they sort of hoped their life would be. Their sort of projection of their self. Not reaching that and calling that failure, I think. Or thinking of it as failure.

[Susan Morrison]

Like Dustin Hoffman, the Meyerowitz story, or Jeff Daniels.

[Noah Baumbach]

Yeah. Or Green Bay himself. And what I realized in doing this was that in some ways, defining yourself by your own success is sort of the same challenge. Because it's just another way of not knowing who you are, not looking at where you really are and where you, you know. And I think Jay Kelly is. There's something in him in the beginning of the movie that's sort of motivating him to go out in the world, to find himself in some way. What's the passion come from the game? How you and Vivian do? Well, we were up 5, 4, and I do too many movies, but it's fine. What's the packing? You think I do too many movies? I think you do just the right amount of movies. I think I do too many movies.

[Susan Morrison]

You do work a lot.

[Noah Baumbach]

See, Barbara tells me the truth.

[Sponsor/Advertiser Voice]

What happened last night?

[Noah Baumbach]

You can't have too much underwear.

[Sponsor/Advertiser Voice]

How'd you get the black eye?

[Noah Baumbach]

I'll tell you on the plane. What plane?

[Sponsor/Advertiser Voice]

The plane that I booked.

[Noah Baumbach]

We're leaving at 1. Where are we going? Meg, where are we going?

[Susan Morrison]

France. France?

[Sponsor/Advertiser Voice]

France.

[Noah Baumbach]

I mean, there are events that sort of set him going. But I liked that about the character, that it was somebody who is. There's something kind of. There's certainly something infantilized about his life, but that there is something in there, you know, in ways that we often do. Like, in some ways talking about coming after white noise of, like, reinventing himself. Like, something in him knows he needs to almost perpetuate his own crisis to move forward in life. And I think I'm interested in that, too, of the sort of unconscious things we do throughout our lives. Like, you look back and you're like, oh, yeah, I needed a change then. But I didn't. I couldn't have told you that. But I did this. Which made the change happen, you know. And, you know, certainly people have gone through. I mean, divorce is that. I've dealt with that a lot. And, you know, it's like what Mike Nichols said about the Graduate. It was like the story of a man who saves himself through madness.

[Susan Morrison]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, all the movies. And if you think about it, a lot of art is really about the gap between who we are and who we think we are. Exactly. And when you and I were talking about this the other day, at first when I saw you were making a movie about a massively successful person, I thought, what a change. But you were saying that this feeling of failure and unfulfilled ambition and huge success are both ways of kind of having a barrier to who you really are. And it made me wonder, is there some kind of medium level of success that is more healthier, or is this just the human.

[Noah Baumbach]

No, because we probably just want more. I think no matter what, there's a gap, you know, no one's ever going to close that gap. And I think we look and find different ways in our life, you know, throughout. I mean, it can be more conscious, like through therapy or through whatever, but to sort of reintroduce ourselves to ourselves as we go.

[David Remnick]

Noah Baumbach speaking with Susan Morrison of the New Yorker. More in a moment.

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[Susan Morrison]

You know you were just quoting Mike Nicholson. I was just remembering something that I read in There are two interesting biographies of him recently. He's quoted at one point of saying, you know, people who figured out how to like themselves, they're really boring. You don't want anything to do with them.

[Noah Baumbach]

Yeah.

[Susan Morrison]

Which is kind of interesting.

[Noah Baumbach]

Yeah.

[Susan Morrison]

So I feel like this movie is in the tradition of, you know, I'm thinking of Seth Rogen's show, the Studio, Robert Altman's, you know, the Player. It's a great comedy of manners About. About Hollywood. And you know, there's some really funny. There's a great running gag about a piece of cheesecake in his rider that is so funny. And so anyway, watching the movie, I kept imagining you through your various movies making notes of all these little idiocys that you have encountered along the way. I mean, is J. Kelly a repository, the film a repository for little things you've noticed, or. I also assume that Clooney and Adam Sandler themselves have probably lived J. Kelly kind of life and have.

[Noah Baumbach]

Absolutely.

[Susan Morrison]

I mean, was it like a kind of grab bag of people's.

[Noah Baumbach]

Yeah, I think so. I mean, also like this idea for a character which is true for people, you know, movie stars of a certain level, where they have, like, they do. Wherever they go, there's always the same things laid out for them.

[Susan Morrison]

You know, does this happen for you? Do you have a rider?

[Noah Baumbach]

No, I don't have. I mean, there's definitely that thing of like. I mean. Cause also the rider for. For him, you know, it's this sort of notion of like in the beginning of the movie, you haven't seen the movie. It's. It's like there's a cheesecake as part of like the assortment of things that is in every room he goes into. And he says, I don't like cheesecake. How. Why is this always here? And Adams plays his manager, says, you know, well, you once said you liked it, so it made it into the writer. But I also felt like it was actually a good, you know, an amusing way to sort of also again, tell the sort of story of identity and, and of like, who are we? Are we the person who said it then? Are we? You know, and these things, like this rider idea too, they get repeated. So it is sort of like, well, I wanted this one time years ago and I'm still getting it, you know, and it kind of can keep you from advancing or changing in your life because it's the same stuff that you had asked for back then. And I think sort of. And that's what happens to those, I think, to people sometimes who get too, you know, they're too sort of bubbled in that way. So I thought that was. Again, they're amusing details and I, you know, the milieu is fascinating to me. It's a world I know well. But I also. There are so many elements in it that I felt like I could kind of tell these. This sort of tale of identity crisis.

[Susan Morrison]

Yeah. Well, the cheesecake as kind of part of his composite identity that he's performing as you just said it, you know, this whole movie is kind of about, you know, at one point he says, I don't know who I am. Am I just playing a part? It's about how we all just kind of perform ourselves, you know, and collect little bits of cheesecake and, you know, idioms and whatever. And it also reminds me of another thing that you do in your films. And I'm especially thinking of Meyerowitz stories where, you know, Joan Didion always said that we tell ourselves stories in order to survive, you know, to console ourselves. And you often create characters who within a movie, they'll tell the same story. You'll hear them tell the same story the way people tell the same family stories or the same jokes. Or even in Jake Kelly, Adam Sandler as the manager is always calling his clients puppy, you know, and the one client probably doesn't know that the other client's being called puppy, you know, but this way of repeating phrases and stories makes the characters feel so lived in and so real. But that's another version of just how you're kind of performing your character.

[Noah Baumbach]

Well, yeah, and how language, the way we talk or the way the characters talk is so. Becomes self defining too, and sort of can they break those patterns? I mean, it is. I write a lot of dialogue and it comes naturally to me. I think I have an ear for it. But I'm always interested in the movies of sort of like how the rhythms of how people talk, both as helping me find the characters, often as I'll write myself and kind of of discover the characters while I'm writing the dialogue, but also how what people say is not what they're saying. And I often write a lot of extraneous stuff that isn't even really meant to be focused on. It's like musical, just sounds and things, but I think. Or how people talk so as not to have to say anything. But also how people's patterns can change over the course of a movie and how that is also a way of discovering character or revealing character in a movie.

[Susan Morrison]

Well, so if we all tell ourselves a story about our lives in order to make us feel better, what story is Jay Kelly telling himself?

[Noah Baumbach]

Well, I mean, I guess at which point in the movie we don't. I think the story that initially that he's telling himself is that these sort of choices that he's made and the bargains he's made with himself throughout his life are, were worth it. You know, I think, you know, when we all are younger, we make, you know, we make Decisions that seem much easier because we think, well, I have plenty of time to get to the other thing. Like, you know, I'm gonna read War and Peace, you know, at some point, you know, and, you know, then you get to a certain point and I think the point that Jay Kelly's in in the movie, where essentially it's a kind of shocking realization, even though it's the most obvious thing in the world, which is that this is the only one he's gonna get. This is the only, this is the only version of his life. And these decisions are real decisions and they've had real consequences and they're real. And, you know, it's a shocking realization. I mean, like, that the human experience is your experience. And I think that's the story he's telling himself. And I think that story starts to show its cracks as the movie goes, which is, I think, true in probably a lot of my movies is the characters have these stories that are ways to sort of justify the life they've lived.

[Susan Morrison]

Jay Kelly is wonderful and I hope you all see it. Thank you so much, Noah.

[Noah Baumbach]

Thank you. Susan Yam. Thank you.

[David Remnick]

That's writer and director Noah Baumbach talking with the New Yorker's Susan Morrison. I'm David Remnick. That's the New Yorker Radio Hour for today. I hope you had a great holiday and a special welcome to our new listeners on WBAA in Indiana. Hope you enjoyed the show.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Announcer]

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards with additional music by Louis Mitchell and Jared Paul. This episode was produced by Max Balton, Adam Howard, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul and Ursula Sommer with guidance from Emily Bottin and assistance from Michael May.

[Susan Morrison]

And special thanks this week to Katherine Sterling, Amanda Miller, Julia Rothschild, Nico Brown and Michael Etherington. And thanks also to Pat Thomas and.

[Noah Baumbach]

Terry chun at the 92nd Street Y.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Announcer]

The new Yorker Radio Hour is supported by supported in part by the Trina Endowment Fund.

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